[439] His motives in doing so have been much debated by historians. His introduction of the command . [676] A mass amnesty for certain categories of convicts was issued, halving the country's inmate population, while the state security and Gulag systems were reformed, with torture being banned in April 1953. [93] By that year according to the historian Robert Service Stalin had established himself as "Georgia's leading Bolshevik". [196] His department allocated funds for establishment of presses and schools in the languages of various ethnic minorities. [475] Although de facto head of government for a decade and a half, Stalin concluded that relations with Germany had deteriorated to such an extent that he needed to deal with the problem as de jure head of government as well: on 6 May, Stalin replaced Molotov as Premier of the Soviet Union. [199] Stalin thought it necessary because unlike Lenin he was unconvinced that Europe was on the verge of proletarian revolution. In 1952, Stalin's last book, Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, was published. [103] In Baku he had reassembled his gang, the Outfit,[104] which continued to attack Black Hundreds and raised finances by running protection rackets, counterfeiting currency, and carrying out robberies. [621] Stalin was concerned that Mao might follow Tito's example by pursuing a course independent of Soviet influence, and made it known that if displeased he would withdraw assistance from China; the Chinese desperately needed said assistance after decades of civil war. [684] According to scholar Robert Service, Stalin's "few innovations in ideology were crude, dubious developments of Marxism". [499] They achieved high levels of industrial productivity, outstripping that of Germany. [592] Stalin also initiated a new military build-up; the Soviet army was expanded from 2.9million soldiers, as it stood in 1949, to 5.8million by 1953. [304] His growing influence was reflected in naming of various locations after him; in June 1924 the Ukrainian mining town of Yuzovka became Stalino,[305] and in April 1925, Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad on the order of Mikhail Kalinin and Avel Enukidze. [395] He declared that "socialism, which is the first phase of communism, has basically been achieved in this country". [770] According to Volkogonov, "Stalin's private life and working life were one and the same"; he did not take days off from political activities. [220] By that time, Sovnarkom had turned its attention to spreading proletarian revolution abroad, to this end forming the Communist International in March 1919; Stalin attended its inaugural ceremony. [891] Khlevniuk noted that at various points, particularly when Stalin was old and frail, there were "periodic manifestations" in which the party oligarchy threatened his autocratic control. [291] In 1925, the two moved into open opposition to Stalin and Bukharin. . [798] Stalin's favourite subject was history, closely followed by Marxist theory and then fiction. [831] He gave nicknames to his favourites, for instance referring to Yezhov as "my blackberry". [811], Stalin was a keen and accomplished billiards player,[812] and collected watches. [355] Conservative social policies were promoted to enhance social discipline and boost population growth; this included a focus on strong family units and motherhood, re-criminalisation of homosexuality, restrictions placed on abortion and divorce, and abolition of the Zhenotdel women's department. [312] Many Communists, including in Komsomol, OGPU, and the Red Army, were eager to be rid of the NEP and its market-oriented approach;[313] they had concerns about those who profited from the policy: affluent peasants known as "kulaks" and small business owners or "Nepmen". 18991904: Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, 19051912: Revolution of 1905 and its aftermath, 19121917: Rise to the Central Committee and editorship of, 19271931: Dekulakisation, collectivisation, and industrialisation, 19451947: Post-war reconstruction and famine, In the Soviet Union and its successor states, Despite abolishing the office of General Secretary in 1952, Stalin continued to exercise its powers as the, After Stalin's death, Georgy Malenkov succeeded him as both. [119] Lenin believed that Stalin, as a Georgian, would help secure support for the Bolsheviks from the empire's minority ethnicities. By highlighting the ways in which Stalin manufactured charisma, this article will show how the 'cult of personality' can be viewed as a legitimation technique using manufactured charisma as a tool. Using the idea of collective responsibility as a basis, Stalin's government abolished their autonomous republics and between late 1943 and 1944 deported the majority of their populations to Central Asia and Siberia. "[870] These deaths occurred as a result of collectivisation, famine, terror campaigns, disease, war and mortality rates in the Gulag. [533] In 1944, the German armies were pushed out of the Baltic states (with the exception of the Ostland), which were then re-annexed into the Soviet Union. [173] Bolshevik militia seized Petrograd's electric power station, main post office, state bank, telephone exchange, and several bridges. [899] Socialist writers like Volkogonov have acknowledged that Stalin's actions damaged "the enormous appeal of socialism generated by the October Revolution". U.S. led forces pushed the North Koreans back. [240] As People's Commissar for Nationalities, Stalin believed that each national and ethnic group should have the right to self-expression,[241] facilitated through "autonomous republics" within the Russian state in which they could oversee various regional affairs. He remained in control of the USSR until his death in 1953. On the one hand, you can argue that Stalin was clearly an effective leader. [33] The seminary's journal noted that he declared himself an atheist, stalked out of prayers and refused to doff his hat to monks. [562] He was quoted in Pravda on a daily basis and pictures of him remained pervasive on the walls of workplaces and homes. [407], When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, the Soviets sent 648 aircraft and 407 tanks to the left-wing Republican faction; these were accompanied by 3,000 Soviet troops and 42,000 members of the International Brigades set up by the Communist International. [540] The Red Army withheld assistance to Polish resistance fighters battling the Germans in the Warsaw Uprising, with Stalin believing that any victorious Polish militants could interfere with his aspirations to dominate Poland through a future Marxist government. [270] To bolster his image as a devoted Leninist, Stalin gave nine lectures at Sverdlov University on the "Foundations of Leninism", later published in book form. [203], After the Bolsheviks seized power, both right and left-wing armies rallied against them, generating the Russian Civil War. [597] In contrast to his approach to the Baltic states, he rejected the proposal of merging the new communist states into the Soviet Union, rather recognising them as independent nation-states. [915] Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd. [159] In a celebratory mood, Stalin travelled by train to Petrograd in March. [315], In early 1928 Stalin travelled to Novosibirsk, where he alleged that kulaks were hoarding their grain and ordered that the kulaks be arrested and their grain confiscated, with Stalin bringing much of the area's grain back to Moscow with him in February. [429] That month, Stalin and Yezhov signed Order No. [118] Shortly after the conference, Lenin and Grigory Zinoviev decided to co-opt Stalin to the committee. [146] In August, he arrived in the village of Monastyrskoe, although after four weeks was relocated to the hamlet of Kostino. He was captured by the German Army and then committed suicide. But whether that's the case will likely forever remain a matter of speculation, Brent and Naumov concluded in Stalin's Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953 . [517] Soviet military industrial output also had increased substantially from late 1941 to early 1943 after Stalin had moved factories well to the east of the front, safe from German invasion and aerial assault. Stalin made a decision to use his power over the country to raise production. [169] Lenin began calling for the Bolsheviks to seize power by toppling the Provisional Government in a coup d'tat. It sought to provide a guide to leading the country after his death. [299], Stalin was now the party's supreme leader,[300] although he was not the head of government, a task he entrusted to his key ally Vyacheslav Molotov. [384] Historians have long debated whether Stalin's government had intended the famine to occur or not;[385] there are no known documents in which Stalin or his government explicitly called for starvation to be used against the population. [251] For Lenin, it was advantageous to have a key ally in this crucial post.[252]. "[935][936] In early 2010, a new monument to Stalin was erected in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. [218] The Polish-Soviet War ended on 18 March 1921, when a peace treaty was signed in Riga. [820] People who knew him, such as Khrushchev, suggested he long harboured negative sentiments toward Jews,[821] and it has been argued that anti-Semitic trends in his policies were further fuelled by Stalin's struggle against Trotsky. [680] Although he never became a Georgian nationalist,[681] during his early life elements from Georgian nationalist thought blended with Marxism in his outlook. [391] Stalin would not acknowledge that his policies had contributed to the famine,[380] the existence of which was kept secret from foreign observers. [599], In 1948, Stalin edited and rewrote sections of Falsifiers of History, published as a series of Pravda articles in February 1948 and then in book form. [617] Across Eastern Europe, the Soviet model was enforced, with a termination of political pluralism, agricultural collectivisation, and investment in heavy industry. [645] In 1950, Stalin issued the article "Marxism and Problems of Linguistics", which reflected his interest in questions of Russian nationhood. [51] He continued to evade arrest by using aliases and sleeping in different apartments. [615] In Poland, the Soviets merged various socialist parties into the Polish United Workers' Party, and vote rigging was used to ensure that it secured office. [764] According to biographer Montefiore, "it is clear from hostile and friendly witnesses alike that Stalin was always exceptional, even from childhood". His own woman [Alliluyeva] was enough for him, and he paid scant attention to her. [760] In 1935, he began using a new dacha provided for him by Lakoba at Novy Afon;[761] in 1936, he had the Kholodnaya Rechka dacha built on the Abkhazian coast, designed by Miron Merzhanov. [657] It has been conjectured that Stalin was murdered;[658] Beria has been suspected of murdering him, but no firm evidence has ever appeared. 2 Lenin was seen as the figure head of the Communist Party, Stalin used this to his advantage in winning over the Russia population. [292] At the 14th Party Congress in December, they launched an attack against Stalin's faction, but it was unsuccessful. [539] Privately, Stalin sought to ensure that Poland would come fully under Soviet influence. [189], Because of the ongoing First World War, in which Russia was fighting the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary, Lenin's government relocated from Petrograd to Moscow in March 1918. "[590] He personally took a keen interest in the development of the weapon. [557] Aware that these countries had been pushed toward socialism through invasion rather than by proletarian revolution, Stalin referred to them not as "dictatorships of the proletariat" but as "people's democracies", suggesting that in these countries there was a pro-socialist alliance combining the proletariat, peasantry, and lower middle-class. [81] They launched attacks on the government's Cossack troops and pro-Tsarist Black Hundreds,[82] co-ordinating some of their operations with the Menshevik militia. Joseph Stalin (trade unionist) Joseph Stalin is a Sri Lankan trade unionist, as of 2022 serving as general secretary of the Ceylon Teachers' Union. [55] He found employment at the Rothschild refinery storehouse, where he co-organised two workers' strikes. [543] Stalin had wanted Hitler captured alive; he had his remains brought to Moscow to prevent them becoming a relic for Nazi sympathisers. This has been a period replete with events of a decisive nature. [477] Despite intelligence agencies repeatedly warning him of Germany's intentions, Stalin was taken by surprise. [194] In November 1917, he signed the Decree on Nationality, according ethnic and national minorities living in Russia the right of secession and self-determination. His work is disregarded as polemical, but has a strange life online, where it is cited regularly by anyone who wants to score a quick victory for Mao. Ruthless in his conduct, moderate estimates suggest that he was directly responsible for the death of 40 million people. [919] After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the first President of the new Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, continued Gorbachev's denunciation of Stalin but added to it a denunciation of Lenin. [916], Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation process in Soviet society ended when he was replaced as leader by Leonid Brezhnev in 1964; the latter introduced a level of re-Stalinisation within the Soviet Union. [503], In April 1942, Stalin overrode Stavka by ordering the Soviets' first serious counter-attack, an attempt to seize German-held Kharkov in eastern Ukraine. [508] In June 1942, the German Army began a major offensive in Southern Russia, threatening Stalingrad; Stalin ordered the Red Army to hold the city at all costs. [572] Academia and the arts were also allowed greater freedom than they had prior to 1941. In this he recalled the 1825 Decembrist Revolt by Russian soldiers returning from having defeated France in the Napoleonic Wars. Some weeks after the controversy, the Patriarchate of Moscow forced Zhakov to remove the icon of Stalin from his parish. [369] After Bukharin's departure, Stalin placed the Communist International under the administration of Dmitry Manuilsky and Osip Piatnitsky. [580] In the Leningrad Affair, the city's leadership was purged amid accusations of treachery; executions of many of the accused took place in 1950. The existing government of landlords and capitalists must be replaced by a new government, a government of workers and peasants.The existing pseudo-government which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people must be replaced by a government recognised by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants and held accountable to their representatives. [196] That month, he travelled to Helsinki to talk with the Finnish Social-Democrats, granting Finland's request for independence in December. [813] He also enjoyed practical jokes; for instance, he would place a tomato on the seat of Politburo members and wait for them to sit on it. [372] His relationship with Nadezhda was also strained amid their arguments and her mental health problems. [195] The decree's purpose was primarily strategic; the Bolsheviks wanted to gain favour among ethnic minorities but hoped that the latter would not actually desire independence. [486] The German advance on Moscow was halted after two months of battle in increasingly harsh weather conditions. [875], Stalin's Soviet Union has been characterised as a totalitarian state,[876] with Stalin its authoritarian leader. [528] Stalin was impatient for the UK and U.S. to open up a Western Front to take the pressure off of the East; they eventually did so in mid-1944. [151][152], In Kureika, Stalin lived among the indigenous Tunguses and Ostyak peoples,[153] and spent much of his time fishing. This concept was intricately linked to factional struggles within the party, particularly against Trotsky. Georgy Malenkov was nominally the next leader after . [334] Although he and Stalin had been close for many years,[335] Bukharin expressed concerns about these policies; he regarded them as a return to Lenin's old "war communism" policy and believed that it would fail. Stalin had nearly a million of his own citizens executed, beginning in the 1930s. [76] He publicly lambasted the "pogroms against Jews and Armenians" as being part of Tsar Nicholas II's attempts to "buttress his despicable throne". [650], On 1 March 1953, Stalin's staff found him semi-conscious on the bedroom floor of his Kuntsevo Dacha. One is the political scientist Rudolph Rummel (1932-2014), a non-China specialist who made wildly higher estimates than any other historianthat Mao was responsible for 77 million deaths. [795] Stalin also enjoyed watching films late at night at cinemas installed in the Kremlin and his dachas. [849] In later life, he disapproved of Svetlana's various suitors and husbands, putting a strain on his relationship with her. [263] A compromise was reached, in which the federation would be renamed the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (USSR). Video: Vladimir Lenin. [637], In his later years, Stalin was in poor health. [136], Stalin's article Marxism and the National Question[137] was first published in the March, April, and May 1913 issues of the Bolshevik journal Prosveshcheniye;[138] Lenin was pleased with it. [723] He remained proud of his Georgian identity,[724] and throughout his life retained a heavy Georgian accent when speaking Russian. [642] That same month, a much publicised trial of accused Jewish industrial wreckers took place in Ukraine. Also allowed greater freedom than they had prior to 1941 Army and then committed suicide Nadezhda... This crucial post. 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